Report of the Secretary-General on Peacebuilding and sustaining peace

Two years ago, the General Assembly and the Security Council came together to express their commitment to building and sustaining peace. They emphasized, in the twin resolutions on the review of the peacebuilding architecture, General Assembly resolution 70/262 and Security Council resolution 2282 (2016), that Member States needed to work better together to sustain peace at all stages of conflict and in all its dimensions and stressed that sustaining peace was imperative to preventing the outbreak, escalation, continuation and recurrence of conflict. It was recognized in the resolutions that sustaining peace should be broadly understood as a goal and a process to build a common vision of a society, ensuring that the needs of all segments of the population were taken into account.

In the resolutions, the General Assembly and the Security Council recognized that sustaining peace was a shared task and responsibility of Government and all other national stakeholders and should flow through all three pillars of the United Nations’ engagement at all stages of conflict. They further reaffirmed the primary responsibility of national Governments and authorities in identifying, driving and directing priorities, strategies and activities for sustaining peace and emphasized that inclusivity was key to advancing national peacebuilding processes and objectives.